Growth of network traffic, complexity of networks, and customer demands have increased the need to improve network performance/optimization. To do so, various Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) options are used for communication with/between servers that provide TCP services in order to improve network utilization and throughput (average rate of successful message delivery) and reduce latency and errors. TCP options are meant to provide information about a server's capabilities related to receiving data through a network. A client may transmit data to the server based on values of the TCP options. A network device provides the values of the TCP options to the client. Currently, vendors of network devices configure the values of TCP options. As a result, clients receive the same static values that are configured for the TCP options on the device whenever the clients attempt to connect to any server through the device (i.e., regardless of which particular server the clients attempt to connect). Configuring static values of the TCP options on network devices does not permit adjustment of values of TCP options when connecting with different servers and/or adjustment of values of the TCP options to account for evolving capabilities of servers.
Most vendors configure values of TCP options in a relatively conservative manner (i.e., the values reflect capabilities that are worse than those of most servers). When TCP options are configured in a conservative manner, network traffic fails to fully utilize a network's bandwidth. As a result, the performance of the network is sub-optimal (i.e., traffic is transmitted at a slower rate than possible through the network). Alternatively, vendors may configure values of TCP options in a relatively aggressive manner (i.e., the values reflect capabilities that are better than those of most servers). In these cases, connections fail when clients attempt to send data based on the aggressive values to servers that have worse capabilities than those reflected by the aggressive values (i.e., servers fail to receive data from the clients).